


will i understand?

by violetstardust



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Gen, is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them., it's ok though he's ok, jamie goes through the five stages of grief when owen makes that one statement, owen has a lot of near-crying moments, set after everyone dies, set during flora's wedding actually, so to get back at him she tells a 9-hour ghost/love story that he knows very well, this fic is about owen!!!! love him so much, to truly love another person, yeah that one, you know the one.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetstardust/pseuds/violetstardust
Summary: Flora's wedding brings everyone from Bly back together again. There's a lot for Owen to think about, especially when Jamie retells the story of Bly Manor. He misses Hannah, and he doesn't quite understand everything, but he thinks that he will.
Relationships: Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma, Owen Sharma & Jamie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	will i understand?

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i went through an entire bag of marshmallows and three cups of tea while writing this!! i have many assignments due tomorrow that i haven't started yet, but i thought that this would be a good idea!! because i couldn't stop thinking about it!!!!!! anyways it's one am. i am so horrible with picking titles but like. was listening to don't take the money by bleachers on repeat (but like the live version with lorde on it) and just. when lorde says "will i understand" like THAT... ok i will stop rambling about lorde (but will i ever?? no <3) i hope you enjoy this because i love owen so much like you don't understand he deserves the whole entire world i almost cried while writing this fic. love him.

**i.**

He can’t believe they’ve grown so quickly. 

How the time had flown by at the speed of light, leaving him trailing in the dust just to wonder of it all. He’s grown too, he knows, far away from everything that led him here. He sits in his restaurant, across from an aged Henry Wingrave, who smiles at him as they lift their glasses to a toast.

“Cheers,” Owen says, lifting the glass to his mouth. He can’t believe it. Just yesterday, it seems, Flora had been helping him make pancakes in the kitchen at Bly Manor, and now, she’s getting married in a month. 

They don’t know him at all, he knows. They barely remember him. They just know him as a close friend of their uncle’s, and the owner of the restaurant in Paris that they visit whenever they’re nearby. 

“California,” Owen says thoughtfully, “I’m looking forward to it.”

“As am I,” Henry says. “So glad you can make it, Owen.”

Owen nods and glances up at the photograph of Hannah. His eyes linger on her for a moment, and then he looks away and swallows down the last of his champagne.

**ii.**

Truly, they’ve grown _so_ quickly. 

California is nice. It’s warm, and pretty, and Owen can’t stop thinking about how much _she_ would’ve loved it. 

He leaves his bags in his room before going down to the ground floor, where Flora, the bride-to-be, stands with her fiancé. Owen smiles at the sight. Young love. There’s a heartache he can’t quite place, but he doesn’t have much time to ponder over it, as Flora turns to him.

She asks him to speak at her rehearsal dinner; to say a few words and make a toast. He’s surprised at first, because they were close _years_ ago, when she was merely a child, and she doesn’t even remember it. She just knows him as her uncle’s friend. The restaurant owner in Paris who makes terrible jokes every time they visit. Yet, she’s asking him to say a few words.

There’s a twinge of nostalgia in his heart as he looks after her, and he can’t quite believe how much she’s changed. Of course she’s changed— that much comes along with growing. Even so, Owen misses the eight-year-old child who would laugh at his bad puns and help him make cakes.

**iii.**

Is forgetting a side-effect of growing?

He sees Jamie for the first time in _ages_ at the rehearsal dinner. He wonders who they remember her as. Certainly not the gardener. Perhaps she’s another of Henry’s friend’s. The woman who owns a flower shop, likewise to him being the man who owns a restaurant. 

The last time Jamie had visited must have been at least a year ago. They used to write to each other, quite frequently, but they had fallen out of sync for quite a while. There was the occasional phone call, of course, but there wasn’t much to say over the phone.

“Owen,” she nods at him, and he nods back with a polite smile. 

They don’t have time to properly catch up before the rehearsal dinner starts, and before he knows it, they’re sitting at the table, waiting for their meals, and he still hasn’t spoken. He looks across the table, and notices Jamie’s empty seat, but the clock is ticking and he doesn’t know where she’s even off to.

So he stands up and looks fondly over to Flora, and starts a little speech he had prepared in his head. He’s not even thirty seconds in, when Jamie walks in and sits down next to Henry. 

Owen falters when he sees her, and she gives him the smaller half of a smile as she settles into her chair. He blinks and returns it, and then pulls off his glasses and neatly folds them. 

“Did you know that almost half of marriages these days do _not_ end in divorce?” Owen continues, looking back at the bride and groom, “that means there’s a strong probability that you two get to watch each other die.” Heartache piles into his chest again, mixed with reminiscence and loss. 

He closes eyes momentarily, just a blink, but endless flashes of her dance before his eyes. She’s painted golden in his mind, encased in a shrine inside of his head as long as she’ll let him. He misses her. He truly does. 

“To truly love another person,” he says, “is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them.” He looks over at Jamie as he says it, and he sees every matching emotion flit through her eyes as well. She knows what it feels like. They both know it better than anyone.

**iv.**

“I have a story,” Jamie says, and suddenly, everyone’s eyes are on her. “Well, it isn’t really _my_ story.”

Owen lifts his glass to his lips as he looks over to her. Ghost stories— they know they’ve lived in one. They don’t know it _quite_ so well, just the bare components of what had happened at Bly. He knows she’s going to tell the story. He knows that she wants to remember it all in full, to remember _Dani_.

And she does. Jamie paints Dani so well with her eloquent words, and he finds himself settled down as she talks about the au pair. He aches for her really, while she so painfully reconstructs the love of her life in a story brought to life in the little room. 

He remembers it all just as well as she does. How can he forget? Bly is the only collection of memories Hannah lives in, and she’s all he wants to remember. He misses her so dearly. Jamie describes everything about Hannah so gorgeously too, detailing every little moment, and Owen can’t get enough. It hurts, to think of her loss, but he would do anything to hear everything about her, described in every little way that Jamie does. 

Owen still remembers their losses, as fresh as the pain had felt at the time, and he mourns for it all. 

_Paris — July 6, 2000_

_“Jamie!” he calls delightedly, wiping his hands on his apron and making his way over. She’s just burst in through the front door of “A Batter Place.” He hadn't been expecting Dani and Jamie, and they hadn’t said anything about being in Paris. Nevertheless, he’s glad to see Jamie._

_Jamie doesn’t seem very happy to see him. She frowns as she looks at him, and then she looks around. He sees her face fall as her eyes catch the framed picture of Hannah, and Owen instantly knows something’s wrong._

_“Jamie,” he says cautiously, “what’s going on? Where’s Dani?”_

_And she breaks down crying right there, in the middle of the restaurant. He leads her to the back room, gives her a handkerchief, and has a very bad feeling of what she’s about to tell him._

_“The Lady took her,” Jamie stammers out, “Lady of the Lake.”_

_He can’t make sense of it at all at first. He just knows that she’s… gone._

_Through two hours and a lot of tears, he pieces together the puzzle of Bly Manor— the puzzle that he thought that they had so long ago left behind. He doesn’t really know too much about what had exactly happened at Bly, just that there had been something to do with ghosts._

_Yet, here Jamie is, telling him everything she’s figured out and everything that Dani had told her. It’s a lot to process. It’s devastating. It hurts too much to even think about— how much Bly had cursed them._

_Romances at Bly— well, they never fare well, do they?_

_So he pulls Jamie into a hug and tells her that she’s welcome to stay as long as she needs to. She stays for three days and then she leaves._

**v.**

Jamie is watching him. She watches him as she progresses with the story, and he meets her eyes with a small nod and then looks down. Perhaps Jamie remembers that night in Paris. Perhaps she’s thinking of how there’s so much that they’ve been through because of Bly.

Owen knows what's going to happen next in her story. She’s getting to the end of Bly Manor, to the part where they had gotten up frantically in the middle of the night, knowing something was wrong, and driven to the manor together. 

She’s at the part where the ghost had taken Flora. The part where Dani had waded into the lake after Flora. The part where Owen was trying to save Henry’s life.

Owen looks over to Henry, who stands right next to him. Henry’s eyes are cast down as well. He must remember it as freshly as they all do. Owen puts a hand on Henry’s shoulder and nods at him.

Jamie’s eyes are pained as she looks at Owen again. She’s talking about Hannah— about Hannah’s death. Owen blinks, trying to keep tears out of his eyes as he hears about it all over again. He misses her. He misses her so much. They should have had a life in Paris together. They should have been together. She deserved so much better.

“After the housekeeper’s body was taken from the well, some in the village said that the cook rode with her all the way to the coroner,” Jamie says carefully, and Owen closes his eyes. 

He remembers the day all over again. He can feel the wind over his skin as he stepped out into town, as they carried her body away. He hated the feeling of fresh air on his skin; the air that she couldn’t feel, but she deserved to feel it. She deserved life and feeling and living and every single little thing that was taken from her. She deserved all of the good things in the world. 

“And there, he insisted on cleaning her himself, which he managed with a soft towel, soap scented with lavender, and the greatest of care. He stayed at her side until she was buried, and he loved her the whole way. I am told, and I believe, that he loves her still.” Jamie looks at him and gives him the smallest of smiles, and he returns it, with sadness etched into the corners of his mouth.

He lit her a candle after he had gotten back to the manor. He had stood at the altar and let himself cry for all of the losses, and then he had left the candle alight and went to sort through all of her things.

Then he had left. He left Bly as quickly as he could, and hurried to Paris, where he had opened the restaurant. It was more for Hannah than it was for himself. He just wishes that she could have seen it. She would’ve laughed at the name, he just knows it.

When the story is over, Owen feels so overwhelmed with emotion. Just thinking about it all makes him want to cry, and reliving the whole story as Jamie had told it, has him positively shaking with emotion. “Christ, is that the time?” he says, looking down at his watch, and then looking over to Flora, “big day tomorrow. Best get some rest.” 

He passes Jamie as he walks out, and he puts a hand on her shoulder. She holds his arm, and for a brief moment, their pain is shared in an intimate way. It’s as if he can feel her emotions, and he’s pretty sure she can feel his. 

Owen gives her a smile and heads on his way to get some sleep. He knows that he’s going to see Hannah in his dreams tonight.

**vi.**

The wedding is the most beautiful wedding he’s ever been to. Flora is so happy. Henry is happy. Miles is happy. The day is gorgeous, and _happy_ , and Owen supposes that’s all that really matters. 

Everyone is dancing, as he stands next to Miles. 

“Are you going to dance?” Miles asks him, sort of in a teasingly boyish way, and Owen grins. Miles hasn’t changed too much.

“I would,” Owen says, “but I’m not, because I don’t have a dance partner now, do I?”

“Well, there are plenty of people who are probably willing to dance with you.”

“No,” Owen shakes his head, “no one who I want to dance with.”

“Really? Then, who do you want to dance with?”

“There was a woman, once,” Owen says wistfully. “She’s gone now, but I’ll always love her.” He lifts his glass of champagne and takes a sip, and then catches sight of Jamie, standing at a table across the dance floor. He lifts his glass at her as they make eye contact, and she smiles and lifts her own glass in return. 

Love. It’s all around them. It’s why they keep moving forward; it’s why _he_ keeps going. Love is what gives their lives purpose. He lives for Hannah. He lives and experiences life for her, because she had never gotten the opportunity to do so. He lives because he knows that she would have wanted him to.

Love is what connects them all; a golden-woven web of feeling and life. It’s why Jamie stands there, it’s why he and Miles laugh at his bad jokes, it’s why Flora dances with Henry on the dance floor. It’s why they all exist. It’s why they must keep going forward.

Goodness, how they’ve grown so quickly.

**Author's Note:**

> ok now let's talk about how much we love owen!!!! (and lorde, if anyone wants to talk about how much we love lorde with me please do so my tumblr is @violetstardust like yes i know lorde has nothing to do with this but i like. miss her ok) thank you for reading this!! comments and kudos are always appreciated so much!! <3 have a good night/morning depending on wherever you are <3


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